iPhone Prices And Its Affect On People

I’m sure as most people know the iPhone came out yesterday in the US as almost every media outlet is talking about it. Just incase there just happens to be people who don’t know what it is, the iPhone is a cellular phone with a lot of fancy features such as a large and bright screen, the ability to browse the Internet with similar qualities as say a laptop and it allows you to control a lot of features using a touch screen.

The thing that was interesting to me was the price as according to what I read you can buy a 4GB model for $499 US and an 8GB model for $599 US. Like most people, the thought of paying that much for what is intended to be used primarily as a cell phone is kind of shocking. What’s kind of more surprising to me though is seeing how cynical a lot of people are to the people who actually bought the product. I even saw some comments of people implying that if one of the owner’s of the iPhone gets mugged for carrying that around that they kind of deserve it for buying it in the first place.

That kind of made me think, what is it about this product in particular that makes some people so resentful to others for owning one? It’s not like people before didn’t carry around expensive mobile gadgets like this that have so much more features compared to a product that the majority of people would own. For myself, seeing people have expensive things like that may make me wonder if they bought it so that they can simply gloat about it or if it was to truly enhance their current lifestyle. I never view that as a reason to shower negativity on another person though.

The way I sometimes view it too, all the early adopters for these kind of things are in some ways helping to make the product less expensive and better for you too if you are more of the wait and see type of person. I wonder how it will be here should it ever come to Canada as the price tag will be even higher due to the exchange rate and all.